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Tag / COLA

I don’t really have a lot to say about this article, especially since it’s kind of old news by now. I had written this when the COLA cuts were still an everyday news item, and it was the hot-button veterans issue of the moment. Now, with the VA scandal going on, this feels ancient. That said, I still think it’s worth a read.

When I was working on this article, something strange happened. A veteran follower of mine on Twitter actually reached out to me to ask me to explain how the COLA cuts were going to work. He hadn’t had a chance to really dig into the news, and he was concerned. Knowing that I followed the issues, he sent me a message asking me if I could put the whole mess into layman’s terms for him to let him know just what to expect. I took it as a compliment, that because of all my work writing and editing the Warrior Wire column the past couple of years, someone actually saw me as some sort of authority on the matter. It felt pretty cool, I must say. Although Penthousehas been covering veterans and the military for four decades, people don’t always take it seriously, and it’s not always easy to get interviews, as some people still don’t realize we publish articles like this. It makes the job of putting together this monthly feature that much harder, but it also makes it that much more rewarding when I get feedback. Whether it’s someone saying they’ve looked up my work and are willing to grant me an interview because they like what I’ve done so far, or someone like this guy who reached out and asked me, because of my writing, to help him understand the issue, it means a lot to know that these articles are getting out there and having some sort of impact. Even if only one person is helped by the work I do (and the work my editors and fellow Warrior Wire writers do), that’s still a big deal.

I’d also like to take a moment here to thank Joe Davis, from the VFW, for all his help with this article. I know a lot, but I’m also fortunate enough to have a really amazing community of people much more knowledgeable than I am who let me pick their brains every month and help me understand what’s going on so that I can share the news with my readers. I’m not exactly an economics wiz, so some of the math-y stuff involved in writing this COLA article was a little bit harder to grasp. Joe took the time to explain it all to me, and his responses to my questions were so in-depth and detailed that I joked that I should give him the byline of the story, since he’d put in as much work as I had.

Anywho, you can read my article, “Diet COLA,” front the April 2014 issue of Penthouse by clicking the image above or by clicking right here.